Experts weigh in on conspiracy theories that shocked everyone by actually being true: 'These people are legendary'

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  • Which conspiracy theories were later proven to be true?
  • AtomicMonkeyTheFirst Tobacco companies knew about the dangers of smoking and witheld and falsified data for decades, probably condeming thousands of people to deaths. from cancer & other smoking related diseases.
  • velvtcake Cointelpro. The FBI actually ran a secret program to spy on and disrupt civil rights groups, anti-war activists, and other political organizations they didn't like. This wasn't just passive
  • surveillance either, they actively tried to discredit people like Martin Luther King Jr. and infiltrate groups like the Black Panthers. It all came out in the 1970s when activists broke into an FBI office and leaked the files.
  • When someone tries to tell me about a conspiracy theory. Me: I know more than you.
  • Whoswho-95 NSA mass surveillance program on US citizens, allies defense apparatus, individual heads of friendly states. All while collaborating with big telecom companies to bulk gather data and pass it on to NSA in-house tools.
  • It is FLABBERGASTING how easily all this was swept under the rug in the name of terrorism by passing FISA law that not only protected NSA but also telecom companies too (retroactively too).
  • Do people really know the tools NSA has? It's all very very very cool and very very very scary. Look up Tailored Access Operations. These people are legendary.
  • Edit: i come back from lunch and this post blew up. Don't come for me NSA, do some introspection.
  • moccasinsfan Project Eschelon.
  • It was a conspiracy theory during the Clinton Administration about the US governmnet monitoring domestic communication. We later found out it was true.
  • nobody: history channel at midnight:
  • bunkscudda The Non-Fat/Low-Fat craze of the 80s/90s was created by the Sugar Industry lobby.
  • SadPhase2589 The Dingo did get the baby.
  • magcargoman Atari burying millions of unsold copies of ET and Pac-Man for the 2600 in a New Mexico landfill.
  • KorbanSwartz There are people in the conspiracy subreddits paid to run interference on legit conspiracies that are posted there by
  • manipulating the posters and comments into making people agreeing with the conspiracy look bad.
  • buckyhermit TLDR: A conspiracy theory that South Korea and North Korea worked together to prevent a popular South Korean politician from being elected president was actually proven to be true.
  • In 1990s South Korea, there was a suspicion that there was some funny business going on to prevent a guy named Kim Dae-jung from being elected as president. Basically, he was a left- leaning politician who favoured a more
  • reconciliatory tone towards North Korea. South Koreans in charge obviously didn't like that. But surprisingly to some, neither did the North Koreans in charge. To
  • legitimize their power, North Korea needed a South Korean enemy to fight against. Kim Dae- jung's friendlier approach would threaten that. So South Korean and North Korean officials cooked up a scheme. They met secretly
  • in China, where South Korea gave money to North Korea to create border disruptions whenever Kim Dae-jung got too popular during campaigns. This became so routine that South Korean citizens nicknamed it the "North
  • Wind." It was a conspiracy theory that North Korea would do something to sabotage Kim Dae-jung whenever he got too popular. Eventually a South Korean spy blew it wide open. He was posing as a
  • businessman from South Korea who was interested in filming advertisements in the North, meeting North Korean officials in China. In reality, he was working for South Korean intelligence to gather proof and details. of North Korea's nuclear program.
  • During one of those stays in China, he happened to be in the same hotel and proximity to the North and South Koreans in the scheme and confirmed the scheme's existence with his North Korean colleagues. He gathered enough proof of what was happening to
  • threaten to go public, if they kept going with it. They didn't and without the "North Wind," it resulted in Kim Dae-jung winning the Kim Dae-jung eventually became known as South Korea's greatest president
  • and won the Nobel Peace Prize for his North Korea strategy. This whole thing was dramatized in the film The Spy Gone North. If you want to Google more, the spy's code name was "Black
  • Venus." None of this was publicly known until around. the 2000s to 2010s, when the people involved were convicted.
  • pm_me_ur_demotape Snowden. Before that we probably all assumed the government was probably spying on us, but to what extent was unknown and to think the answer was
  • "everyone, all the time, any time" was in conspiracy theory territory. Then Snowden was like no yeah, they know just about anything they could ever want to know about everyone and whatever you do digitally.
  • is completely at their disposal, as well as plenty of things you do in the physical world. Workarounds like Tor just slow them down or deter, but if they really wanted you. in particular, they can get around that too.
  • josiahpapaya I remember back in like 2017 I was serving a table and I was joking with the dude at the table about how my husband told me he wanted to go shopping
  • for winter boots, and literally as soon as I opened FB literally EVERY ad was for winter boots. The guy was laughing along, but the girl got very quiet and seemed perturbed, so I took the hint and left quickly.
  • As I was leaving, I overheard her say "you don't really believe that sh, do you?" And he was like "what? That companies are listening to your voice to market things?" And she was like "YES. It off sooo much when me
  • people talk about that becayse it's just not true, and that would be such an invasion of PRIVACY." Like this lady was MAD. I've always wondered how she's doing in 2025
  • knowing that not only is it true, it's _normalized and expected now, and a lot of people have a smart home that knows what they need for groceries before they do.
  • Luke5119 Idk about a theory as much as pretty much fact. MLB ignored the mass use of steroids in
  • baseball which peaked in the 90's and early 2000's because it was stimulating ticket sales following the players strike in 1994 where public opinion and interest in baseball was dwindling. It gave them a
  • quick rebound and they only gave it attention when the health effects came to light more and congress got involved in the mid 2000's.
  • alwaysboopthesnoot Mountain Meadows Massacre, Joseph Smith's conviction for scrying with rocks and his very early conning of New Englanders for cash: his fleeing the
  • jurisdiction after his Kirtland. Ohio money cons and escapades there and then his polygamy and his shooting his way out of jail during his drunken, planned prison. break.
  • Denied. Lied about. Covered up. The whispers on the winds that anyone who believed in these conspiracies were Satan's minions. The pretense. The holy rituals devised to absolve those who participated, of their sins.
  • Blamed on persecution and meddling outsiders-called tall tales and malicious lies— when most of the whistleblowers were born in the covenant or were true- blue Mormon converts, themselves.
  • All true. All factual. All proven. All documented. All corroborated, and later all admitted to by church authorities after decades, or in several cases after a CENTURY, of punishing anyone who dared speak of them.
  • It's not paranoid if they really are out to get you, and it's not slandering if what you say is true.
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